After updating his copy of SWAT 4 with the latest Vivendi patch, a gamer noticed that his game was connecting to Massive's Ad server to grab posters to place in the game's levels.

As you can imagine the gamer was a little pissed to learn the game he had already paid $50 for was now serving him up a steaming plate of ads plugging Gamefly, Coca-Cola, Battlestar Galactica and Tripping the Rift every time a level ended. Instead of whinning about it, he did what any good gamer would do, he hacked it.

What he discovered is that the ad client contacts the advertising server between games to tell it how long a gamer spent with each ad in their view. It also shows when the ads were seen, for how long, from how far away and from what viewing angle.

Apparently Vivendi snuck a new End User License Agreement in with the patch, so the whole thing is legal, which doesn't make it any less slimey.

The gamer also discovered that while the ads aren't yet appearing in the UK, that's likely just because no one is paying for them to be placed yet.

The good news is that there are two things you can do to prevent the ads: You can block the ads by simply adding a few lines of code to a couple of files. You can also stop buying Vivendi games until they stop taking advantage of us.

Online advertising for the gamer generation [National Cheese Emporium]

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